Job openings barely grew in November

Published 8:12 pm, Thursday, January 10, 2013

WASHINGTON -- U.S. employers advertised about the same number of jobs in November as in October, suggesting hiring will stay modest over the next few months.

Job openings ticked up 11,000 last month to 3.67 million, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's about 12 percent more than were advertised in the same month a year ago.

The number of available jobs is slowly climbing back to the roughly 4 million that were advertised each month before the recession began in December 2007.

More than 12 million people were unemployed in November. That means there were 3.3 unemployed people, on average, competing for each open job. That's the lowest ratio since November 2008. Still, in a healthy economy, the ratio is roughly 2 to 1.

Separately, the Labor Department said the number of people seeking unemployment aid slightly increased last week, ticking up 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 371,000. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, rose after falling to a four-year low the previous week.

Overall, the two reports suggest that the job market is improving at the start of 2013 at roughly the same slow but steady pace as last year.

Overall hiring was largely unchanged in November, according to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS. Companies hired 4.3 million people, just 3,000 more than in October. Layoffs ticked down to nearly 1.7 million, 10,000 below October's number.

The number of people who quit their jobs rose, but was little changed compared to this summer. More quits can be a good sign for the job market. Most people quit when they move to another job.

Job openings rose in retail and hotels and restaurants, which likely reflect holiday-related gains. Openings ticked down in construction and manufacturing.

Employers added 161,000 jobs in November and 155,000 in December, according to the government employment report released last Friday. The unemployment rate fell stayed at 7.8 percent in December. It fell to that level in November from 7.9 percent in October.

The gain in hiring nearly matched the average of 153,000 jobs per month in 2011 and 2012. That's been just enough to slowly push down the unemployment rate, which fell 0.7 percentage points in 2012.

Thursday's JOLTS report looks at total hiring, layoffs and quits. The report released last Friday measured net hiring and unemployment.

The JOLTS report suggests that employers didn't step up layoffs or cut back on hiring in the midst of the debate over the tax and spending changes known as the fiscal cliff. Many economists feared that the prospect of higher taxes and steep cuts in federal spending would drag on job gains.

That's a good sign, since more budget showdowns are expected. Congress must vote to raise the government's $16.4 trillion borrowing limit by around late February. If not, the government risks defaulting on its debt. Republicans will likely demand deep spending cuts as the price of raising the debt limit.

While the private sector is slowly climbing its back way from the Great Recession, the public sector is continuing its long employment slide, making it the worst few years for government employees in recent memory.

That's a conclusion from a new report by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government at the University of Albany, which calculates that while private-sector employment is down 3.1 percent from its peak in January 2008 and on the rebound, state and local government employment is down 3.4 percent from its peak in August 2008 and continuing to slide.

State and local governments were slower to shed jobs than the private sector when the recession began-after all, their revenues, which come in from taxes, do not follow economic trends in real time as revenues from private companies do.

About 60 months after the 2007 recession, state government employment is down 1.3 percent, it said. By contrast, state government employment 60 months after the 2001 recession was up 4.3 percent, and was up 18.3 percent after the 1973 recession.

That may be because "government jobs" became a much-maligned term after 2010 when a number of tea party candidates were voted into office and vowed to cut government pensions and salaries. The Republican governor of Maine went so far in April of last year to call government workers "about as corrupt as can be."

The cuts span across states and governments. New York had the largest decline in K-12 education jobs, California cut the most jobs in police protection, and Texas slashed the most in hospitals and corrections, according to the Rockefeller Institute.

"The recession caused a historic drop in state revenues, and so states responded by cutting their spending, and to a significantly lesser extent, by raising revenue and drawing on reserves," said Phil Oliff, an analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "In some states, some policymakers have taken on public employee salaries as part of their political approach."

Los Angeles Times (McClatchy-Tribune Information Services) contributed to this story.